


Searching

by libre_skyes (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15x03, BAMF Castiel (Supernatural), Castiel/Dean Winchester UST, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Baggage, Las Vegas, M/M, Season/Series 15, Surreal, The Empty, fantasies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-02-08 12:48:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21476260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/libre_skyes
Summary: After the rupture, Sam's depressed and Dean's drinking too much. Dean has an awkward dream. Meanwhile, Cas is beginning to live on his own terms.This started as a reaction to 15.03 but is becoming a rather surreal AU adventure-fic. As a brand new word-wrangler, I promise it gets mildly better after the few chapters, or at least it stops jumping narrators quite as much.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	1. The Fallout, or Post-Rupture

Dean's fine. He's functional. His liver can handle it. Normally Sam would be calling him out on his shit, but Sammy's in the danger zone himself at the moment and doesn't have the energy to bitch at him properly. He's talking about Jess, jeez. Might as well dredge up everyone they've lost, all the people they couldn't save, all the people who've been royally screwed over because the Winchesters barrelled into their lives. Sam's the only thing he has left. That's what he keeps telling himself, because the Cas-shaped hole in his chest is too painful to live with. He can't tell anymore if he hates Cas for screwing things up, because he left when Dean asked him to, or for some other reason he's not ready to admit to himself. 

Sam feels like the darkness is swallowing him. He's known despair before. In some ways, it's always been with him, like a melancholy shadow flitting near his edges. If he were a normal person he'd probably be in therapy for depression and anxiety, forget this monsters and end of the world business. He knows that Dean has a drinking problem, and that it's been amping up since Cas left. He sees Dean holding it in, but it's obvious that he's searching for Cas everywhere they go, even though he refuses to talk about him. He sees it in the way Dean holds his breath slightly whenever he catches sight of anyone who looks remotely like Cas, in the way he fidgets a little too much and reaches too readily for his flask when it's not him. 

Sam dreams repeatedly of being Lucifer's vessel, of immaculate white suits and roiling anger filled with superiority and power. What scares him most is when he wakes feeling satisfied and pleased from dreams of death and hatefulness, as if Lucifer is lingering into his waking self. If God himself has decided to end them, what if there's no other way out? He refuses to give up yet, but sometimes he wonders if he'll get lost enough that saying yes to Lucifer seems like a good final "fuck you" to God. He knows that this is nihilistic, a giving up on free will altogether, and he prays (to whom?) that it never gets this far. Maybe the only thing keeping him going is that he's got to hold it together for Dean, that he refuses to let his brother come to harm. 

Dean wonders what he would do if Sammy weren't here for him to focus on. He thinks he'd probably have already gone out with guns drawn in a blaze of glory. Like suicide by cop. Only against Chuck or whatever. He can't bring himself to call Chuck God. He's perma-angry and tired. He knows his breath reeks of alcohol, he's way overdue for a shower, and he feels himself starting to drool as he slides into sleep. Gross. The dream starts violent and bloody. It's a mix of all the times he and Cas have beat the shit out of each other. The time Cas pounded him against a brick wall for giving up on himself, the time he almost killed Cas while under the influence of the mark, the time Cas was brainwashed by Naomi and didn't know what he was doing. Then suddenly the dream shifts and it's a different kind of marking, pounding, heat. Dean wakes confused, ashamed, and crying out Cas's name in the Bunker, glad that there's thick concrete walls between him and Sam so that no one can hear him. 

Cas wakes suddenly at the same time, sitting up in darkness clear across the country. He knows not why, but Dean is clear as a bell in his mind as he wakes. It reminds him a little of angel radio: he used to "hear" all of heaven at once, but not necessarily in words. A symphony. The presence of all his brothers and sisters, before he Fell. He breathes deeply and uses a meditation technique to fall back asleep. (He's been reading up on other religions since before he hit the road, and finds Buddhist techniques practical.) In the morning, he pulls back the opulent curtains of his Las Vegas suite. It's where Amara stayed when she was here; he's on her trail and hopes he's getting closer. She's the only one he can think of who might be able to take on God and win; darkness to cancel out light. He puts the Winchesters out of mind. They've been his world for so long, especially Dean. He is no one's tool now. Not heaven, and not the Winchesters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I began this story as a nod to NaNoWriMo. No way am I hitting those word goals, but I might keep writing every day until it's complete. I will probably change the title of this story once I finish it, since I'm better at titling things afterwards. Hope you enjoy!


	2. Blue Eyes in Sin City

She's been watching him all night. He's cute but far too sober for the place, with a slightly creased trench coat and serious shoes like he belongs in a comic book or an accounting office. He's a private investigator looking for someone named Amara; been on the strip for two days now asking questions and interviewing anyone that'll sit still for him. Sin City is a good place to hide and to stay lost. It's full of people looking for a good time or a terrible one, and wait staff who like to gossip but know better than to say anything too interesting to the wrong person lest it bring trouble down upon their backs. People are transient, so it's much harder to notice if they go missing. 

The network of demons and creatures here is, as you might expect, extensive. It's a rich field for them, a mix of desperate, bawdy, and indulgent, set against the neon and baroque. There's also a parallel realm mapped onto the spaces, a kind of top secret storage space for extremely valuable artifacts, and more than a few entrances to other realms that are well hidden. It's all powered by sacrifices, a few souls here and there. They say that the last king of hell set it up before he went to the Empty. Well, he had style and vision, that's for sure. 

She makes some quick adjustments to the clingy fabric draped strategically across her body, baring a little more skin and stretching theatrically. Time to play with her food. The disguise she's wearing is a Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield type. Ripe, luscious, a little bit innocent, very all-American bombshell. It makes the feeding all the more a betrayal somehow; oh, the screams! 

She introduces herself, taking his hand for a bit too long. He doesn't seem to blink very much, and his eyes are very blue and beautiful. She'd like to keep them. She imagines his eyes as bare stalks floating in a glass jar. She's not just after a meal; she's a collector as well. She wonders if some trace of his sincerity will be detectable in them when they are bare, pulled from his skull. He looks away from her cleavage when she leans in too much, although she sees him sneak a sidelong glance when the thigh-high slit of her dress rides a bit higher than it should. It's quite unexpected, thrilling even, to feel him resist. "You're a snack," she jokes, a bit literally. He frowns slightly, eyes crinkling minutely before asking another question. Her expression changes. "I've seen her, but we can't talk here. I'd be inviting a lot of trouble. Can we go somewhere more private?" Her eyes widen for a moment to indicate fear and she looks away, looks back, playing at temptation seasoned with a glimmer of trepidation. 

They're kissing messily in the mirrored elevator on the way to her room when he backs her into a corner. When she feels a blade at her throat, she's a little turned on (nice moves there, cutie) even as she realizes she's been made and shrugs into her true form, which is larger and not entirely humanoid. Sometime later, she's cuffed to the railing but smiling as Jimmy Page takes his leave. If he's really looking to take down God, she's all for it. She's told him how to enter a few of the other realms, where to find the key, and a few details might be missing or misleading, but where's the fun otherwise? If he lives, maybe she won't eat him next time they cross paths. Or, she'll just kill him first before playing with him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Bare. There was a prompt list that I've lost track of, so the remaining chapters will be un-prompted. 
> 
> I'm pretty brand new at this writing thing, and am into constructive criticism. Or just comments! Feedback is nice, but so long as I'm entertaining myself (and a few others) that works. :)


	3. Hitting the Books

"What are you doing?" Dean grouses when he finally appears. 

Sam pauses for a moment. He doesn't look up. "What does it look like I'm doing?" He's got a spread of books laid out, his laptop to one side, a growing collection of coffee cups keeping him company. It's hard to tell time in the Bunker, which is good and bad. Great for pulling all-nighters that go on for way too long, terrible for one's circadium rhythm. 

"I'm going stir crazy, man. Let's go kill something. You got a case for us or something?" Dean flashes a grin, looking years younger for a moment at the thought of guts and monsters. 

Sam shakes his head. It's been quiet, nothing notable in terms of suspicious deaths, and besides he's been focusing on the big picture stuff. You know, the deity that went all Old Testament on them recently and definitely has it out for them. 

"Well, what've you got then?" 

"I'm looking at creation stories, anything that might've existed before God, and theories about how reality works. There's gotta be a loophole, some way to beat him." 

"Well, Amara. The Darkness came before God, right?" Dean's asking a question he already knows the answer to, playing dumb a little bit.

"Yeah, I'm looking, but we have no way to contact her, or even to find out where she is right now, unless you have any ideas? You guys did have that freaky connection where she was way into you." 

Dean shrugs. "We could ask Chuck where to find his sister so we can try to get her to kill him or something," he says, making a face. 

"Yeah, no." Sam turns his attention back to his spreadsheet. There's columns for names, contact method (mostly summonings and how reliable they are, materials needed), locations (likely places that said being might be, or where they've sighted), motivations (into human sacrifice?), references and page numbers. "Funny thing is, the Darkness isn't really in the Bible, but her description does slightly match deities described in other older religions. Like Zoroastrianism. What if God isn't just God? What if he's from somewhere else too?" Sam starts to get a slightly mad gleam in his eye,"And God is a writer, right? What if there's something that can, like, write him out of existence, trap him by using some form of authorship against him, since that's his thing?" 

"Huh," Dean pauses, thinking it over for a moment. It's a bit out there, but hey they're grasping at straws here since Lilith melted the Equalizer. "When's the last time you ate? Nerd." He flips a paper cup at Sam's head. 

"Jerk." 

"Bitch." 

He's still drinking way too much, but Dean seems closer to normal than he has in days as they chow down at a local diner, making bad jokes and stuffing his face. Sam's not looking forward to the complete shut-out, stone-wall plus defensive fireworks he knows he's going to have to invoke by bringing up Cas pretty soon, and part of him wants Dean to have this moment of lightness, doesn't want to break it, break Dean any further. 

Unbeknownst to Dean, Sam's been texting Cas, no response. If he doesn't hear back, he'll track the phone's location tomorrow. Then he'll decide what to do next.


	4. Of Maps and Toys

"Let's go," Sam throws a duffel bag at Dean's head before continuing on, "Cas needs our help. He's in Vegas." 

Something vulnerable flickers across Dean's face, relief or regret. Instead, he grins. "Vegas? Heck yeah." 

This is something they know how to do. It's easy this next part, almost as if they're in a movie montage, quick cuts as they swing into action: weapons check, coffee downed, tank full, music on loud. Before they know it, they're flying down the road, roaring across the land. 

What they don't know is that something, someone is watching them. 

"Hey guys," Chuck says innocently. He lights up as he spots his favorite characters keeping on going. He's looking down at a miniature map upon which sits a toy version of the Impala facing in a westerly direction. He rolls his neck, flexes his palms, fingers laced together, and places them back onto the keyboard of a very pink laptop. 

Huge gusts of wind start to appear, buffeting the car. Out of nowhere, a tornado appears and swallows them up, twisting them into the air like an unfortunate cow in a tornado movie. In between the screaming, Dean thinks that he might've seen a cow or two pulled into the air with them. "I hate flying aaaaaa!" he screams. Next to him, Sam is bracing himself against the side and roof of the car for dear life as they tumble through the air. "Aaaaaah!" Sam yells back. 

Chuck giggles. He has a water glass over the toy car and is thrashing it about in a circular motion so that it clinks against the sides, kind of like a child with a fly. After a moment, he removes the glass and plops something else down on the map.

The Impala lands right-side up, miraculously. Dean winces, hearing the damage to the suspension. He's also pretty sure that he's hoarse from all the screaming. He has no idea how long they were in the twister for, but it felt like an eternity. Before them, a huge tower-like form begins to materialize, bursting forth from the earth and erupting towards the sky. It's just stopped growing about 20 stories up when the earth shakes, like something's woken up. Sam opens the door to get a better look and makes it about halfway out of the car, gaping upwards, before an enormous, silent shadowy creature swoops down and makes off with him. With unexpected speed, it takes him straight to the top. 

Dean's trotting determinedly up stairs, even more stairs, and even more stairs on wobbly legs. It's a never-ending circular staircase, sort of an Italian castle tower thing in an earthy reddish mud color. Terra cotta? His legs are burning and he's panting a little. Maybe Sammy's onto something with the whole exercise thing. He kicks down the wooden door at the top, gun drawn, a long length of rope looped around his torso, sweaty from the climb. 

Sam's passed out on a gauzy bed with all these fluttering translucent curtains. Above him, looming over him is the black shadow like it's feeding on him or something. Dean doesn't like how close to Sammy it is, and it's doing something weird. Sammy's almost got something overlaid on him, a white suit, but it's not really there at the same time. He fires at the dark creature, but it doesn't even hit, just goes through it. As he advances, a tendril of darkness, night without stars, reaches out and touches him, and Dean crumples, falling to the ground, his gun lying loose in his open hand. 

Unbeknownst to the brothers, there's a shift in scene. They are no longer where they were. The tower is still there, as is the rocket launcher that Dean set up pre-stairs, angled up at the tower in case he needed to blow everything up (via remote) to create a dramatic escape or distraction. Chuck glances back over at the table and exclaims, "Hey, where'd they go?" The Impala that he was using to represent them is no longer there on the map, nor is he able to find it at all.


	5. Fantasies and Nightmares

Dean has no idea where he is, but everything is lurid shades of pink and neon blue, throbbing to an intense, deep beat that's moving through him like a shudder, a wave. He feels drugged by the bodies crushed against his, swirling around him. He can barely think, let alone form coherent thoughts, but he sees the faces of the beautiful women and men around him suddenly become grotesque, swine-like and distorted, like a glitch in the program, before he's pulled back into the writhing, moaning fleshy mass and loses himself once more. Not good.

"Dean! We have to go!" Cas appears, reaching out for him while trying not to look at him at the same time. Dean turns, eyes half lidded, and grins.

Cas manages somehow to move them through an exit, at which point the urgent heat thrumming through Dean’s system dissipates, replaced by utter and burning embarrassment. Dean is completely mortified. He remembers pressing up against Cas in inappropriate ways. He also notices that Cas might be missing some buttons. "We have to find Sam," Cas growls and moves, assuming Dean will follow. Dean does, wondering if he can pretend this never happened, flinching when some traitorous part of him notices that it’s kind of hot when Cas is a little intense and commanding.

They enter a scene and Dean immediately knows that it’s Sam’s, where Sam is trapped. They’re in an enormous library-cum-apothecary, with shelves that stretch multiple stories and filled with all manner of old tomes and ingredients for spells. There are even sliding ladders attached to some of the shelves, and the whole place smells ancient but pleasant, like leather, wood, and polish. Dean grumbles slightly as they begin to ascend yet another set of never-ending stairs, this set rather creaky and made of wood.

Sam looks wrong. He’s wearing immaculate white gloves, clean white jacket, slacks, white everything. The evil outfit. He’s holding a cigar, and his eyes are cold. Behind him is a fountain filled with blood. “Sam?” Dean calls. Sam snaps his fingers, and several things happen at once. They’re in a casino and Sam’s the owner or some kind of high-roller. He’s still dressed in white, but instead of the blood fountain he’s got a bevy of demon women serving him from their veins. One of them bleeds into a martini glass and gives it to him for him to sip from. He doesn’t seem to see or hear Dean or Cas at all. His eyes are solid black, like a demon’s.

Somehow Sam is everything. In addition to occupying his body, he’s running the entire casino with his mind. Cas can feel it around them. It’s like he’s disembodied. Even though Sam isn’t responding, the women are starting to take note, reacting to them as if they’re intruders, and the fight is on. “Sam, this isn’t real! You’ve got to stop it!” Dean yells as he and Cas are encircled by Ruby-like attackers. They feint, stab, whirl, but the doors open and more are coming. “Cover me!” Cas yells and pulls an oval, gilt-edged mirror off a wall. He dashes in front of white-suit-Sam with the mirror; Sam comes to, actual feeling enters his eyes, and the world shatters.

Sam, Dean, and Cas are floating in a vast, dark expanse. “What the?” Dean asks, even though he thinks he might know. The inky blackness of it feels familiar, like the monster that got them earlier in the tower.

“We are in a part of the Empty, and should get out,” Cas responds, “The demons of Las Vegas made a deal with it, or perhaps found a loophole, in order to feed on fantasies and guilt as a power source. Their activity infected parts of it, that are now out of control. I’m sorry that one of them came after you earlier. That was probably my fault.” He pulls out an oddly ordinary object -- a doorknob -- and positioning it in the air with one hand, he turns the knob with the other. A door opens where there was not one before, and all three of them tumble out into the plush carpet of a hotel suite. Cas reaches up and removes the doorknob to close the way after them.

“Where are we now?” Dean looks around.

“We’re in Vegas,” Cas responds. “This is where many of the routes converge, by Crowley’s design.”

“Uh, can we go back and get Baby?” Dean asks, concerned about his car, still not meeting Cas’s eyes.

“What is that?” Sam gestures towards the old doorknob.

“No time,” Cas replies to Dean, “I’m not sure, I borrowed it,” he says to Sam, “A spider-demon told me where to find a few things.”


	6. The Plan

Posh suite, huge bed. Dean's sprawled on it, while Sam perches neatly on an edge, somehow prim despite his giant frame, and Cas has a chair pulled up almost to the edge. Dean watches Cas doing the head tilt thing as he talks with the eye squint combo and it's kind of endearing. He feels himself soften slightly. 

". . . so we've got an hour, no more, to get through the gate to talk to him before it closes." 

"What?" says Dean, "Sorry, repeat that?" He rolls over, does an experimental bounce, and starts getting up. 

Sam shoots him a side glare. 

Cas continues, unphased, "We can get access to all of Chuck, try to talk to other aspects of him. When he created this universe, he splintered a part of himself off. That's the Chuck we know. Still all-powerful here, but not all-knowing. It's like he's just one part of the universe's unconscious." 

"Wait, what? You're telling me that God's got multiple personalities? You mean we gotta play his shrink or something?" Dean interjects. 

At the same time, Sam starts, "That kind of makes sense. Otherwise how come he can miss things that we're doing, be distracted at all?" 

"Yes, in some ways he built in certain aspects of not-knowing into this version of him, in order to make this more of a game. If you can't be surprised at all, it's apparently less entertaining. Perhaps it's why free will was created at all to begin with," Cas says. 

"Well, that's depressing ... and it means there's some way for us to beat him. So, great," Dean replies. 

Cas continues, "Problem is, we have to get through the underbelly of demonic Las Vegas to get to the portal. I can open into the Empty, but from there we can only get partway due to the way the system's been set up. We have to travel the rest by foot." 

"Okay, let's go. Time's a wasting," Dean's ready to hustle. He was born ready. 

"One more thing," Cas pauses here. "We should probably attach ourselves to each other this time. Otherwise we may get separated again in our respective dream worlds. It needs to be something strong." 

Sam pats down his pockets and goes to look in the drawers. "No," says Dean to the fuzzy handcuffs, as if he's talking to them rather than Sam. Sam and Dean wind up removing their belts -- one is threaded through a couple belt loops on Sam and connects him to Dean, the other connects Dean to Cas. 

Thus prepared, hitched to each other like mountain climbers, Cas does his trick with the doorknob. As they enter, it's as if the world spins upside down a few times. Completely disoriented, Dean feels pulled from both sides and hopes his jeans are strong enough to hold the weight of three grown men without splitting. Fuzzy handcuffs flash through his mind for a moment. 

Suddenly, Dean and Sam are there, somewhere. They're in a strange void with no discernable directionality. Caz isn't there. The belt formerly connecting Dean and Caz dangles from Dean's side. The buckle is hanging open. "Shit," he says.


End file.
